Allegory of Human Life

The idea behind this small copper comes from Michelangelo. His drawing known as The Dream of Human Life showed a young man roused from sleep, ringed by the masks and shadows of human vice and called back toward higher things. Allori took up that invention around 1580 and made his own version of it. A central figure sits while the temptations of the world circle around, a moral scheme of the kind Florentine patrons enjoyed decoding. It is the sort of learned, slightly severe picture that suited the Counter-Reformation mood settling over Italy in those years, when even a beautiful nude body was expected to carry a lesson about the soul.